


The Talk

by idelthoughts



Series: Mortinez Fics [12]
Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: 1x22, Episode Tag, F/M, Gen, Post-Finale, The Big Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 19:46:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4679048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idelthoughts/pseuds/idelthoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry wondered what Jo saw when she looked at him now.  A fraud, no doubt.  A lunatic. Well, he’d certainly earned her suspicion.  He was a liar, thief, and extortionist—and those were just the things she knew about.  <i>A post-finale reveal scene.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Talk

**Author's Note:**

> It's practically required that you write a post-finale reveal fic if you want to get your Forever fanfic writer card.

“It’s a long story,”  Henry said.  

He was moving through shock straight into a light buoyant sense of floating unreality, almost like he might start laughing at any moment, or that he might cry.  He didn’t know which.  

“Invite her in,”  Abe said finally, and Henry turned to find that Abe had retreated into the shop, taking his seat again at the chess board.

“Yes, of course.  Please, come in, Detective.”  

He stood aside and gestured for her to enter, and Jo stepped in cautiously.  He pulled up another chair to the chess board and offered it to her.  She sat down, hands folded in her lap.  The photograph in his hand caught his eye and he flipped it right side up, getting caught in that moment seventy years ago all over again.  Seventy years nearly to the day—it had been taken in April, this picture, when the cherry blossoms were shedding pink snow over the streets.  Abe had been fussy, but when the camera was produced he’d been fascinated and gone still, curious to see what the contraption being brandished at them—

“Henry.”

Henry looked up at Abe’s gentle prompting, startled out of his memories.  Jo was still watching him.  She bore the same quiet determination she had when she entered the interrogation room with a suspect.  Well, he’d certainly earned her suspicion.  He was a liar, thief, and extortionist—and those were just the things she knew about.  He didn’t even know what his actions towards Adam made him, but at this point, he couldn’t be bothered to care.  That was one action over which he refused to feel anything but satisfaction.

Henry put the photo on the corner of the chess table between himself and Jo.

“You wanted me to explain it to you,”  Henry said.  His breath was short like he’d been sprinting, and the giddiness hadn’t quite left him.  Truthfully he wasn’t sure if he was actually doing this, or if it was all a bizarre hallucination.  “It’s—it’s—“

His mouth moved, but his throat had seized, choking him into silence.  He’d trained his body to keep the secret even when his mind would allow him to talk.

Abe shuffled his chair forward a bit, leaning across to tap a finger on the photo.

“That’s me.  As a baby, you know.  Right after my parents adopted me.”

Jo looked at the photo, then up at Abe.  

“That’s you, huh?”

“Yep.”

She looked then to Henry, meeting his eye.  He was still having trouble making any noise.

“And this?”  she asked.

Henry looked at her finger on the photo, hovering over Abigail’s beaming smile.  

“Well,” Henry managed.  “Well, that’s, ah, that’s Abe’s mother.”

“Sylvia.”

“Abigail,” he corrected automatically.  Quick, like ripping a bandaid off.  “Her name was Abigail.”

Jo’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut.  Before she could gather a response he rose from the chair and went to fetch the two portraits that stood side-by-side on the end table in the shop.  Abigail, as he’d first known her, and then as he’d last seen her, with years of beautiful memories standing between the two photos.  He brought the two pictures to the chess board and lay each down next to the crinkled photo, the three lined up neatly before Jo.  She looked at them, giving each a moment to sink in.  

“Sylvia was Abigail?”  She kept scanning between the three pictures, taking them all in.  

“Yes.”

Abe leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his belly.  Henry knew the tension in his shoulders, could see the restraint he was throwing at keeping his mouth shut and letting Jo work through it.

“Abe, Abigail,” Jo said, and her fingers trailed over the photo again.  “And this is….”  

Jo didn’t look at him, kept staring at the photo.  The hole she left was gaping wide, ready for him to drop the confirmation into place.

“Yes,” he said, answering the unspoken statement.

“In 1945.”

“Yes.”

Jo didn’t look at him, just kept staring at the picture.

“I haven’t aged in a very long time,”  Henry said.  The euphoria was gone by now.  He missed that giddy rush, because it was getting harder to move forward without it.

She finally looked up and met his eye, but was silent, unreadable.

He wondered what she saw when she looked at him now.  A fraud, no doubt.  A lunatic.  Jo broke eye contact and picked up the picture of Abigail from 1984, just before she’d disappeared.

“She was your wife?”

When she’d asked him who Abigail was to him while he stood, contrite but without excuse, in the holding cell she’d bailed him out of, he hadn’t been able to tell that final lie. He’d never told that lie in all the years he’d been with Abigail, never denied his love for her or their connection.  He would have gone with her to her final days proudly calling her his wife, no matter the looks, the risk, the social shunning they’d have experienced.  He loved her and would always love her.  

“She was my wife,” he confirmed, and when he blinked, his sight blurred.  

He wiped at his eyes, cleared his throat, and straightened in his chair.  There had been too much happening these last few days, being constantly thrown from one end of the spectrum to the other, and he was brutally exhausted.  Even though he’d been grieving Abigail’s loss for years and felt like he could finally breathe again after three decades of not knowing, the circumstances of her death had taken him back to the beginning of that grief again.

Abraham’s rough hand settled on his back.

“Henry.  Pops, it’s okay.”

He nodded.  It would be okay, eventually.  He hoped.  Jo placed the picture frame back on the table.  She picked up the snapshot again, holding it gingerly.  She rubbed her fingers to feel the paper.

“This is real, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Henry said.  “Yes, it’s real.”

“Okay,” she said thinly.  “Okay, I didn’t—okay.”

Abe chuckled softly and pushed himself up out of the chair.

“I’ve got a few things to take care of.  I’m gonna let you two talk for a bit.”

Henry was too paralyzed to object as Abe left, making a delayed reach for Abe’s hand as Abe touched his shoulder on his way past.  Once they were alone, Jo glanced around the shop, and then to Henry.  She looked at him like she’d never seen him before, and a few times her eyes darted back to the photo in her hands, drawing comparison between his past and present—exactly the same, but for the trappings of fashion.  He bore the inspections, his fingers picking at one chair arm while he waited her out.

“Are you screwing with me, Henry?”

“No.”  He spread his hands out in a helpless shrug.  “I’m sorry, Jo. I wish I was.”

“This is crazy,” she said.

“Trust me, I know,”  Henry said with a weak smile.  “Why do you think I keep it a secret?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Do you believe me?”

She looked at him, lip caught between her teeth, then she sighed.  

“You’ve lied to me so many times, I don’t know what to think.”

He’d known it was inevitable that one day she’d have enough of him and his endless prevarication.  In a way, she had made it easier for him—she’d cut the tie he hadn’t the strength to cut himself.  But she’d come here to his door once again, unsatisfied with the ending they’d written for themselves.  

“Why are you here, Jo?  Why did you come?”

Her eyes widened and she stuttered for a moment before she found her voice.

“I guess I wanted the truth.”

“You have it, now.  All those lies were to protect myself.”  He tipped his head to the side, allowing room for her likely assumptions.  “Cowardly, perhaps, but I’ve lived through more than enough to know that I’m safer if no one knows.  Who would believe me?  I’d be labelled insane at best, to be treated and held for my own good.  Or if discovered, a lab rat.  Studies, experiments, death after death—”

He was rambling, his words tumbling faster and faster, and he stopped himself with effort before his list of fears flooded over the conversation.

“Death?”

She was frowning at him, eyes sharp again.  He winced.  Right, a rather salient point in all this.  

“I don’t use the word immortal lightly, Jo.  In one sense, I’m as frail and mortal as anyone else.  I _can_ die.  But, for whatever reason, each time I die, I come back again.  Whole, healthy, exactly the same.  Die, disappear, awaken in water, elsewhere.  Every time.”

“You’re trying to tell me that you’ve _died_?”

He patted the pocket containing his watch.

“Remember the first time you returned this to me?  The subway crash?  You were certain I’d been on that subway car.” She nodded slowly. “And I was.  Same as everyone else, I did not survive it.  The watch fell out of my grasp, and was left behind while I disappeared.  Grim, that time—subway pole to the chest, rather unpleasant,” he said, his natural flippancy asserting itself.  Her gaze unfocused and he checked himself.  “I’m sorry, that was unnecessary.”

But his worry was misguided.  Her thoughts were moving rapidly, already elsewhere, already drawing connections.

“If that’s true, if you left the watch behind then, then what happened yesterday?  In the subway tunnel?”

“I died, yes.  Shot.”

“And I found your watch in that taxi at Christmas. Those scratches.  You weren’t all right then, I didn’t know why.  You just—what, is that what you’re telling me you do?  Show up the next day for work?  Keep going like nothing happened?” she said, her voice rising in volume.  “Henry, if this is real, then—then you’ve….”  Given the missing piece, Jo slotted the puzzling details of his behaviour together into an accurate picture with alarming speed.  A pause, then,  “She was your _wife_? God, Henry.“

Silence.  Terrible silence between them, neither moving.

“I didn’t know what happened to her,” Henry said, knowing he had to say something, still staring at the floor, at Jo’s boots, their dull black shine.  “For so long, I didn’t know.  I thought maybe she was living a full life somewhere, without the pall of my immortality hanging over her, the constant looking over her shoulder.  Perhaps I’d asked too much, that loving her wasn’t enough.  And all this time, she—she’d—she was—“

He started stuttering, his head sinking downward.  He covered his eyes with his hand, leaning his elbow on the armrest of the chair.  Abigail was gone, and it didn’t matter whose fault it was, however maybes and might-have-beens lived in her beautiful letter, and what retribution he’d laid on Adam’s door.  Her bones had lain in the ground for decades, unremembered, lost.  He’d given up on finding her when she’d been _so close_.  If he’d worked a little harder, been a bit more resourceful, he might have found her in time.

Henry sucked in a deep breath and stood, walking a few steps away from Jo to hide the gathering tears.

“I’m sorry.  I know you barely believe a word of this.  Ravings of a madman.  Give me a moment, I’ll—I’ll, ah,” he wiped at his eyes, trying to regain his hold on composure.  “I’ll try to explain, I’ll—“

Jo’s hand touched his back.  She’d followed him, come to stand behind him.  It was light at first, and then her palm settled flat over his spine, square between his shoulder blades. He half-glanced over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of her observant expression, mixed with quiet empathy.

It was the same expression she’d had when he’d presided over the autopsy of Abigail’s body.  She hadn’t understood, but she’d seen his distress and tried to comfort him even when he hadn’t allowed her the truth.  Again, here they were.  She might judge him a liar, but she judged him a liar in need of support, and so she supported him.

Sweet, tolerant Jo.  She was far stronger than he’d ever been, braver than he knew how to be, and more patient than he deserved.

Jo’s hand rubbed lightly at his back, and Henry cleared his throat, trying to bring himself back to order.

“Are, ah, are you okay?” he asked.  He had no idea what she was thinking.

“No, of course I’m not okay.  Don’t be an idiot.”

He chuckled at the casually irritated tone of her voice, and she laughed gently with him.  He turned to her, and she dropped her hand, looking up at him.  Her eyes darted back and forth as she searched his face, looking for—he didn’t know what.  Whatever she saw, her lips thinned together and she made a little _hmph_ , as though tucking it away for consideration.

“You sure you’re not screwing with me?” she asked again.

“Fairly certain,” he said, smiling gently, but it didn’t stick.  “I’ve never wanted to lie to you, Jo.  I meant what I said, I care very deeply for you.  I’m so sorry.”

Jo’s expression softened, her head tilting to the side slightly as she sighed, a weary-yet-fond sound he was familiar with, and this time it was easier to smile, and she responded in kind.

“I’ve got lunch ready!”

Abe’s shout carried down the stairs, and Jo looked towards them as Henry did.  They looked back at each other.  He licked his lips, then half turned towards the stairs, tipping his head towards them.

“Would you like to join us for lunch?”

She was silent for a long time, and then nodded.

“Yeah.  If that’s okay.”

He smiled, feeling hope blossom in his chest.

“Yes.  Yes, it’s okay.”


End file.
